Getting to Know You: The Bath Story
by Cybele1
Summary: Harry and Severus discover that it's the little things which count. HP/SS spells Slash.


Title: Getting to Know You: The Bath Story Author: Cybele Rating: PG 13 Summary: Harry and Severus discover that it's the little things which count. Disclaimer: JK Rowling owns their names and their backgrounds. But she probably wouldn't want to own that which they've become. I own my imagination. Snaples owns the Slytherin rubber ducky.  
  
A/N: It's all Snaples' fault *clamps hand over Snaples' protests*. This will be the first part of a joint effort. A series in which we examine Harry's and Sev's happily ever after.  
  
The Bath Story  
  
They'd done it.  
  
After five years of working through their differences, establishing trust and boundaries, overcoming the power disparities of their previous student/teacher relationship, as well as learning to deal with the difference in age, Severus Snape and Harry Potter took that next step.  
  
They moved in together.  
  
They had decided on a modest flat in Hogsmeade-Harry having been uncomfortable with the size and the implications of living Severus' ancestral home, and Severus blatantly refusing to have anything to do with that 'wretched hole' in which Harry had lived since graduating from Hogwarts eight years prior. The pre-cohabitation discussions were civil and calm, each man sacrificing a little on their particular ideas about what the colour schemes should be, where Quidditch World Cups should be kept, and how many snake insignias were appropriate in any given room. On the whole, everything worked out well--as one might expect things to work out between two people who knew and understood each another so thoroughly.  
  
And then...  
  
Harry had come home after a particularly gruelling Quidditch match, tired, dirty and badly in need of a shower. He was preparing a towel and some clean clothes when he heard it...  
  
*Rubber ducky, you're the one*  
  
The low, erection inducing voice vibrated past the door of the bathroom. Harry furrowed his brow and decided he couldn't possibly have heard right.  
  
*squeak* *squeak*  
  
*What? The Hell...* Harry drew closer to the door.  
  
*You make bathtime so much fun. (squeak, squeak)*  
  
Harry would have laughed were he not so completely taken aback at the mental image of his forbidding, stern, sober lover singing a children's bath song. A Muggle children's bath song. An American Muggle children's bath song.  
  
This had to be some sort of joke.  
  
*Rubber ducky, you're the one for me. (squeak, squeak, squeak)*  
  
Harry opened the door carefully just as the chorus was repeated. He saw his lover, his former professor, a man who could make children quake with fear with a slight curl of his upper lip, chest deep in suds, black hair smoothed straight up in a line down the centre of his head, a dollop of foam on the tip of that long hooked nose, singing to a green and black rubber duck.  
  
Harry's jaw dropped and he forgot that he had been attempting stealth. "Oh my god," fell out of his mouth as he stood gaping at a man who had finally lost his mind. He didn't know whether to laugh or to run screaming from the room.  
  
Severus turned toward Harry, his lips tightening into a thin line of indignation.  
  
"What *are* you gaping at?"  
  
The dignity which powered that voice seemed misplaced just now.  
  
"Severus?" Harry gave a half-smile, his eyebrow raised in question.  
  
"What?" Those deep black eyes appraised the young man. "You're filthy. Let me guess, you fell off your broom again. I don't know how you can play that ridiculous game and call it working. Honestly, Harry, it's below your abilities. I should be embarrassed were I you."  
  
Well...it certainly sounded like Severus. Harry watched as the soapy mohawk went lopsided. Severus cursed and placed his rubber ducky in the bathwater with a slight pat on its rubber beak. Cupping his hands, Severus gathered a mass of bubbles and commenced cementing his hair back in place.  
  
"Er...Severus..." Harry was starting to get scared. This man...this was not *his* Severus. The Severus who would glare down at him while pushing him to his knees. This was not the Severus who just last night growled 'I am going to fuck you until you scream for mercy.' This certainly wasn't the Severus who woke him up this morning with a deep sleep tainted kiss.  
  
Severus stood up to look in bathroom mirror, taking particular care in making his mohawk perfectly straight. Harry stared at his naked lover with a vague feeling of surrealism, waiting for the point where the man began laughing. But it wasn't like Snape to be funny. Witty, yes. But funny? No. Harry's Severus was not funny.  
  
Of course Harry's Severus also didn't sing silly songs about rubber duckies with his hair done up in a soapy mohawk and bubbles hanging off his nose either.  
  
"This...this is a joke, right?"  
  
Please let this be a joke.  
  
Severus turned toward him, hair now properly done up. "To what are you referring?" Snape said, clearly irritated at being interrupted during his bathtime routine. He sighed. "No, Harry. I'm not *joking*. You know that I think you're much too bright to spend your time chasing after silly golden balls. You're not a child anymore. You could do something much more worthwhile."  
  
Harry couldn't manage to be offended by his partner's dismissal of his job as childish. In fact, being accused of childishness at this point was so bloody ridiculous that Harry didn't even consider the point. He wasn't really paying attention to anything the other man was saying. All of his concentration was centred on that perfectly straight fan of sudsy black hair down the middle of Severus' head. "Severus...your hair? And the duck?"  
  
Snape glared. "What about Mr Squeaky-Clean? And what's wrong with my hair?" Snape turned to the mirror as though verifying that everything was perfectly in place. Harry had to admit, it was quite an impressive soapy mohawk.  
  
"Er...right. I...think I'll go fix something to eat and...let you...finish up." Harry backed out of the room cautiously. "You just...have fun."  
  
Snape sighed. "Baths are not fun, Potter. They are necessary for the general maintenance of the body."  
  
Harry thought it best not to reply. He shut the door quietly and hoped like hell that he would wake up soon. He walked away and tried to ignore the singing.  
  
*Rubber ducky you're the one for me.*  
  
*fin*  
  
A/N: If any of you are interested in seeing the evil drawing that inspired this abomination, it is here: http://www.swish-n- flick.netfirms.com/for_cybele.jpg  
  
And there it is: proof that Snaples is to blame. 


End file.
